User blog:ReapTheChaos/Mafia III One Month Review: The Economy.
Now that Mafia III has been out a full month, I though I would write a series of reviews covering some of the various features and gameplay. On my first playthrough, I was overall satisfied with the game, aside from some issues with vehicles and their customization, my first impression was positive. Now that I've played through it a few more times I'm finding that some of the features are downright annoying and quite frankly, idiotic. Today, I'll cover the economy. Mafia III gives us the vast and richly detailed city of New Bordeaux, with hundreds of shops, bars, restaurants, gas stations etc., yet the only place to spend money is with the Arms Dealer. Every dollar you spend has to be done through him, be it vehicle upgrades, weapons, explosives and medical supplies all go through that one guy. Even upgrades to Lincoln himself have to go through him, I don't know how he managed to score such a sweet gig, but my hat is off to him on cornering the market on everything. The problem with this is, his prices are absolutely ridiculous! Lets look at weapons. I realize he's dealing in a black market, so you expect there to be some mark-up, but $7500 for a basic shotgun? In 1968 you could walk into any hardware store and buy a basic shotgun for about fifty bucks. Now if he sold them for a few hundred bucks that would be within reason, but the median income in 1968 was only $7700. Not to mention the whole reason this guy exists is because the government doesn't trust black people to own guns, so he went underground to offer them a place to get protection for themselves. I doubt the income for a black person in 1968 was much more than half of the median, so exactly who's buying guns from this guy? Christ, some of them sell for as much as $46k! Even with several hundred thousand burning a hole in my pocket, I'm a little reluctant to drop that kind of money on a damn rifle. Now, you can pick up free weapons, either off of dead enemy or from weapon lockers and so forth, the problem is, there's no way to store them for later use. The real kick in the ass is, if you have one of these in your possession when you select something different from the Arms Dealer, he keeps the damn thing. I mean, I guess he's keeping it, it's going somewhere after all, so you would figure the next time you want that weapon it would be free, but no such luck. At the very least he should offer some kind of trade-in value. Another area involving the economy is earning kickback. It seems that Lincoln's underbosses only have to pay him 2 percent. No, that's not a typo, I didn't mean 20... 2 percent is the maximum kickback you can earn and depending on their loyalty it can go as low as .4 percent (again, that's no typo, that is indeed a decimal point before that 4)! Now, I'm no mobster, but I think any underboss who tried to only kick .4% of their take up to the boss would be sleeping with the gators in short order. *SPOILER ALERT: At the end of the game Leo Galante tells Lincoln he has to kick 20% up to the commission, yet he's only getting 2% himself. Sorry, but those figures just don't add up. On top of that, Lincoln is expected to pick up his kickback from his underbosses. In what Mafia organization does the boss have to do his own legwork? The underbosses should be bringing the money to Lincoln! That's how things work, not just in the mob, but in real life. I don't set my car payment on the kitchen counter and expect my bank to swing by and pick it up. I'm responsible to get their money to them, that's how it works! On top of having to pick it up yourself, they wont pay it again until you do! You got that right, if Lincoln doesn't pick up his money, his underbosses feel they don't have to pay him any more until he does. If this was a real mob organization all three of them would be gator shit by now! Well, that's about all there is to cover on the economy, like I said above, with a vast open world that gave us only one place to spend money, an economy is nearly nonexistent. Category:Blog posts Category:News